FOAM MATTRESS TOPPER - Foam for bedding

Foam is a general description for a material in which there is a suspension of bubbles, normally of air or gas, that have been trapped by the parent material. The entrapping material will be either a liquid or a solid and, when the material is a solid, it can confer numerous benefits to the host material and the way in which it behaves.

In the case of beds, mattresses and mattress toppers, the foam in question is usually a variation of polyurethane and this material (in its foam form) has many advantages. These advantages will be covered later.

Manmade foams

Most naturally occurring foams have a random bubble size and these bubbles can be created by heat or chemical reactions. One of the big differences between these foams (e.g. in a bubble bath) and a manmade foam is that the manmade production technique controls the size of the bubbles and this in turn controls the properties of the foam material. Controlling the size, distribution and density of bubbles can enable the way in which a foam reacts and behaves to be modified and this makes it possible to create a vast range of foam material variations, each with different characteristics.

Foam in furnishings and bedding

One of the best known foams is that used in commercial bedding. This type of foam is found in most houses and sees numerous applications in different types of furniture including easy chairs and sofas.

Foam mattresses are probably the single most common “large unit” application of compressible foams and they are now more common than spring based mattresses. However, there are various foam types used to make mattresses, beds and mattress toppers and these alternate foams can be very different from one another.

For many years a standard polyurethane foam was the staple of the non spring based mattress and this foam came in different firmness levels and with different degrees of springiness. Developments over the last thirty or so yea rs have also seen newer and more advanced foams enter the mattress and topper industry, the two most popular of which are memory foam and latex foam.

Memory foam

Memory foam is made from a visco elastic material that is manipulated by a scientific process to produce a foam with a number of unusual (different to standard foam) properties.

To start with this foam has a very unusual way of reacting to the application and removal of pressure. In both cases the visoc elastic foam either compresses slowly, or springs back to its original profile in a “slow motion” like manner. This has led to it being described as slow recovery foam. Even more valuable, at least when it comes to bedding applications, is this foams ability to shape itself around the object or person applying pressure to it. i.e. The foam flexes, moulds and distorts only around the immediate area about which the pressure is being applied. This means that in the case of a mattress, the movements of two sleepers in the same bed do not affect one another.

Memory foams also react to heat by changing their shape based on not only pressure, but pressure from a warm object like a human being.

Because memory foam is a manmade substance its manufacture can be controlled to vary its density (percentage of bubbles to solid or mass). This means that there are different memory foams with different degrees of compressibility and flexing. Ultimately, this makes it possible to buy a memory foam topper with a firm feel or a very soft feel.

Latex foam

Latex foam is another good mattress topper and mattress body filler and it is produced from a naturally occurring material in the form of latex extracted from trees.

Processed latex is high in air content and similar to visco elastic foam in the way in which it deforms and shapes. There are however subtle differences and these result from the way in which the raw latex is processed for bed and mattress topper applications. Unlike memory foam, latex is springy and it bounces back to its original profile the instant that any pressure applied to it is removed.

Both memory foam and latex foam are flexible and both can be used in foam mattress toppers in sheet form, or by using hundreds of small pieces (replicating the approach of feathers and down).